I don't own one, but I am marveling at the really inexpensive radios from China. Some are garnering great reviews and they were selling well at Dayton. Young hams may find this a boon. At least one very young ham was "gifted" a handheld by the vendor at Dayton, that I heard of. Could be great to maybe revive some of those quiet repeaters? Another angle is, that with the prices so low now, do they present a temptation to those seeking longer range "free" communications, as in casual pirates that want local comms but don't want to bother spending alot and bothering with all that gov't paperwork? Could this low price access make some more headaches for hams? And apparently some are wideband, maybe headaches for those outside our bands. Let us hope that we don't take the heat for that. "Guys with ham radios jam county radio system" headlines, etc.

I think to a certain extent, yes that is a good possibility. I have one of the Wouxun dual-banders. When looking around at all of the various places offering them, I stumbled upon a website selling them as "hunting" radios. Since inquiring minds want to know, I asked them for a programming list for the radio, "to see if it will work with the radios my brother uses when he goes hunting with his hounds." What I received back was actually shocking. They are programming them with MURS (at least they narrow-banded the appropriate channels,) FRS, GMRS, and Marine channels. All of them set to high power. I guess on a positive note there are no ham frequencies programmed, and the weather radio channels are included but set to no-transmit.

In my experience I've seen that unless someone just wants to cause problems, the VHF/UHF pirates tend to avoid ham frequencies. I think most of them know that a lot of us love the challenge of tracking someone down based on the signal alone, and know that the fastest way to get caught is to annoy a bunch of hams.

From what I understand, many hunters use marine bands for back-woods communications. They operate on the assumption that (at least for inland areas such as Idaho) that we're nowhere near a large body of water, so they won't be bothering anyone, and therefore won't get caught.

With all of that said, marine-band handhelds are available at a lower cost than even the cheap Wouxun radios, and will probably raise less "suspicion" when buying them. For now I think that should limit the "casual" pirates and limit it to the malicious jerks just wanting to cause trouble, and I don't think the lower price will make much difference for them.

I don't think that these radios will cause that type of problem. Most people today who want to talk can do so much more easily with a cell phone. I doubt that the "free" use of the ham band will cause any trouble makers to go through the hassle of figuring out repeaters and propagation and such.

Over here, we hear many people using them on the preset "out of the box" frequencies that obviosuly aren't licenced (either for amateur or PBR use) - there's also (possibly coincidental, granted) a large increase in repeater abuse in the area in the last few years.

Additionally, a lot of microlight pilots and hanggliders are using them to pirate 2m and just below (the upper end of 143MHz) rather than get licenced for the airband. Aeronautical mobile use of Amateur Radio is not permitted in the UK.

I also have to warn off the odd person who has bought one as he remembers back when he could listen to the police on his scanner (can't do that here now either, they've gone to TETRA), and I get asked "I can heard people on your repeater, how do I talk into it as well?" The reply being until you have a licence, you don't!

To be fair, I don't see sensible, informed piracy as a big problem. The kind of people who know that the shopwatch repeater isn't used or monitored at night and use it for themselves once all the shops have closed. It's the stupid, uninformed ones that just transmit whereever they like that are a pain.

Ofcom over here permitted the use of LPD handhelds, which are supposed to be 100mW or so, but are more often more like 4W - and are FM, all over the 70cm simplex and repeater input frequencies... so our regulator isn't exactly on the ball either.

With all the export radios,Galaxy,Magnum,Mirage,connex from Copper.com and H and Y electronics it is bad on 10 and 12 mtrs,and all there amps they sell...you can get from 50 wtt amp to a 21 transistor amp and a 400amp power supply.And there is web pages that tell you how to mod any hf radio for 11 mtrs.Nothing new.I have caught many time CBers running on 28.780lsb all from around Farmington Missouri,and also on 145.400fm nothing new.I have Cbers running on 28am running 1500 wtts and one has a Drake L4 amp and running a Galaxy 95t he got off the internet from copper.com,it drives his Drake L4 just fine and splatters all over 10 mtrs for me,73 fro n0zna in MIZZO 108f today...

With all the export radios,Galaxy,Magnum,Mirage,connex from Copper.com and H and Y electronics it is bad on 10 and 12 mtrs,and all there amps they sell...you can get from 50 wtt amp to a 21 transistor amp and a 400amp power supply.And there is web pages that tell you how to mod any hf radio for 11 mtrs.Nothing new.I have caught many time CBers running on 28.780lsb all from around Farmington Missouri,and also on 145.400fm nothing new.I have Cbers running on 28am running 1500 wtts and one has a Drake L4 amp and running a Galaxy 95t he got off the internet from copper.com,it drives his Drake L4 just fine and splatters all over 10 mtrs for me,73 fro n0zna in MIZZO 108f today...

Good to know this is happening in Missouri. I live up in Saint Louis and ran across a craigslist ad with a guy selling 4 or 5 older ham rigs. A couple VHF mobiles and a Kenwood TS-50. I contacted him about the TS-50 and he told me he wasn't sure what it was and just thought it was a fleet radio for a company truck. He also mentioned that he believed the VHF rigs were just "fancy cb's with lots of features and buttons". After talking with him I straight up told him it was illegal for anyone to use those without a ham license. He had no clue at all what that was and what he was selling and only wanted $25 for the TS-50 and $10 for each VHF mobile. Unfortunately someone beat me to the TS-50 and what bugs me is that possible someone may be another bootlegger using HF for his "mud truck radio"..... Its just a simple lack of knowledge and unwillingness to educate ones self on what they are doing, or in this case selling. He could've ebayed that TS-50 and got at least $200. His loss I guess.

With all the export radios,Galaxy,Magnum,Mirage,connex from Copper.com and H and Y electronics it is bad on 10 and 12 mtrs,and all there amps they sell...you can get from 50 wtt amp to a 21 transistor amp and a 400amp power supply.And there is web pages that tell you how to mod any hf radio for 11 mtrs.Nothing new.I have caught many time CBers running on 28.780lsb all from around Farmington Missouri,and also on 145.400fm nothing new.I have Cbers running on 28am running 1500 wtts and one has a Drake L4 amp and running a Galaxy 95t he got off the internet from copper.com,it drives his Drake L4 just fine and splatters all over 10 mtrs for me,73 fro n0zna in MIZZO 108f today...

And you did not think, "stolen gear"?

Good to know this is happening in Missouri. I live up in Saint Louis and ran across a craigslist ad with a guy selling 4 or 5 older ham rigs. A couple VHF mobiles and a Kenwood TS-50. I contacted him about the TS-50 and he told me he wasn't sure what it was and just thought it was a fleet radio for a company truck. He also mentioned that he believed the VHF rigs were just "fancy cb's with lots of features and buttons". After talking with him I straight up told him it was illegal for anyone to use those without a ham license. He had no clue at all what that was and what he was selling and only wanted $25 for the TS-50 and $10 for each VHF mobile. Unfortunately someone beat me to the TS-50 and what bugs me is that possible someone may be another bootlegger using HF for his "mud truck radio"..... Its just a simple lack of knowledge and unwillingness to educate ones self on what they are doing, or in this case selling. He could've ebayed that TS-50 and got at least $200. His loss I guess.

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